Networks allow fast and easy electronic communication between a group or system of devices coupled via data or other communications or electronic links. Data links in this case may include electronic wires and other electronic coupling but also include radio, wireless, Bluetooth and optical links.
A simple network may include only two nodes or devices, or a small number of devices, connected by a single data link but networks can be built up to any complexity and may comprise any number of devices such as nodes, computers, processors, routers, switches, I/O devices, adaptors, converters and other such devices.
For ease of management operating system tasks within a network can be split up into logical groupings called partitions, or software partitions, and the hardware resources on which they run, such as cores, which may be single or multi-cores, memory and IO devices, may correspondingly be divided up and allocated to different partitions running on a network. Multiple operating systems may be run on different partitions and therefore a large number of tasks may be performed across the network processor.
Networking elements for the different partitions on a single system on chip (SoC) device are typically managed centrally by a manager, management device or other processor which allocates networking resources to devices and partitions within the network, manages memory and buffer allocation and further monitors network and partition operation and failure. The manager, or management device also control or couples with data path accelerator architecture (DPAA), and networking interfaces.
A partition in a network may fail and solutions are known to address this.
Published US patent application U.S. Pat. No. 6,363,495 describes a computer system arranged into a cluster of nodes for the splitting of network tasks. The nodes are arranged into partitions and self-regulate their own distribution into partitions using a cluster state map and a cluster node map. When a node fails, or when a link fails, thus cutting off a node from the remainder of a partition, the node is removed from the partition of which it is a member.
The arrangement nevertheless suffers from a computational loss due to failed nodes and ultimately may suffer from the loss of an entire partition.